You noticed how google search became unusably shit a few years ago

[ocean@raru.re]

You noticed how google search became unusably shit a few years ago?
Turns out that was on purpose

[wasabi@raru.re]

@ocean WHO COULD'VE GUESSED (literally everyone)

[ocean@raru.re]

@aetios Because Google is so synonymous with web search for Normies and they don't have any actual competition they can just do whatever and they won't lose users, knowing that, it just makes sense to keep users on your site longer and thus get served more ads

[raktheundead@vmst.io]

@ocean: Ed Zitron wrote comprehensively on the people responsible.

The Man Who Killed Google Search

Wanna listen to this story instead? Check out this week's Better Offline podcast, "The Man That Destroyed Google Search," available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. UPDATE: Prabhakar has now been deposed as head of search, read here for more details. This is the story

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At (www.wheresyoured.at)

[alanthecampbell@techhub.social]

@ocean bunch...of...f**kers.

[itamarst@hachyderm.io]

@ocean As predicted by Brin and Page: "we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." (The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998 - http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)

[samuel@libremercs.dev]

@ocean Just as expected, Google the company who abandoned "don't be evil", is evil. By the way can you link the source?

[wonka@chaos.social]

@ocean If that is not enshittification as defined by @pluralistic...

[zakalwe@plasmatrap.com]

@ocean@raru.re Active enshittification.

[cairobraga@gts.cairobraga.com]

@ocean reinforcing what a lot of people have been saying: Google is an advertisement company. (do you have the link to the full text, please?)

[paradox@raru.re]

@ocean I need to understand what people are searching for and why the first page doesn't help them.
Cuz the only time I can't find something is because I don't really expect to find anything. Either cuz it's a very niche question or earlier when I tried to get a pdf/ebook of Harold and the Purple Crayon (still copyrighted I think, no straightforward download).

Like I believe people are having a hard time. I just can't tell from my experience.

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@ocean TF2 Heavy Voice "Not big surprise!"

[christianschwaegerl@mastodon.social]

@ocean @hjoest Would be great if you could add the link to the source, thanks

[realhackhistory@chaos.social]

@ocean @hjoest @christianschwaegerl came here to say this

[em_and_future_cats@mastodon.social]

@ocean
I learned about this strategy back in the early 2010’s which has made me more deliberate when I put in any searches. At the time I was shocked (I was a teenager then)but I quickly learned how to work around the system. I remember when searching had to be only a couple words at most to work, but now you can use whole phrases, this helps a lot with being more specific about what I want. But yes, it’s sad it’s a marketing strategy to keep people searching instead of “finding what you want”

[postie@possum.city]

@ocean@raru.re
if anyone else wanted to read the rest of the artaicle, the screenshot is from the following article:
https://journalrecord.com/2025/02/20/is-google-making-search-worse-to-sell-more-ads/

[aperture@snug.moe]

@christianschwaegerl @ocean @hjoest www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20recent%20court%20documents%20showed%20that%20Google%27s%20internal%20testing%20demonstrated%20that%20significantly%20worse%20search%20results%20would%20not%20harm%20their%20business%20operations.%20This%20apparent%20immunity%20to%20quality%20concerns%20stems%20from%20the%20company%27s%20dominant%20market%20position%2C%20which%20the%20recent%20federal%20court%20ruling%20addressed.%22

- carrie

[heptasean@social.tchncs.de]

@Paradox @ocean Same! I *can* somehow tell it getting less good over the years – some paid results to ignore here, some only seldomly helpful AI result there, … – but all in all it is still useful enough for me to this day. Do I include enough keywords in my searches? Do I only research topics that are not *that* prone to bad results? Don't know. ‍️

(It's not always on the first page, though. I tend to ignore quite a lot of results based on the preview.)

[mikal@sfba.social]

@ocean
Ha! Knew it!
Not long ago I pointed out to someone that in a way, worse search results meant more time scrolling and ergo more ad impressions, so it wouldn't at all surprise me if they quit bothering to improve.

Fuckers. I'd assumed a sort of passive acceptance and laziness had led to degraded quality, but the fact that it was actually designed that way means there should be a "recall" of their product and they need to compensate me for all the wasted time before I finally gave up and went to DDG (which, IMO, has dropped significantly in quality since I started using it ).

Thing is, look at ANY online business that makes money off of ad impressions and there is an immediately obvious incentive to find ways to increase your scrolling time on the site. Not all are scummy grifters, of course, but when the incentive is there, someone is going to take advantage of it.

[cowman@nfld.me]

@ocean this is the core problem with metrics that target 'engagement', and things like A/B testing that enable it.